“We have some powerful leads right now that we’re investigating today as we speak.”

Warren detectives on Monday hoped to interview a couple “people of interest” as investigators try to solve the slaying.

O’Dell, who was an exotic dancer, was found dead late Sunday morning in the living room of the sparsely furnished house she rented on Garrick Street, near Nine Mile and Dequindre roads, by a cousin who was babysitting O’Dell’s 2-year-old son. The cousin went to the home shortly after 11:30 a.m. because she had not heard from the Warren woman in two days, entered through an unlocked window and made the gruesome discovery in the blood-splattered room.

Based on the autopsy of O’Dell’s body, officials believe she died a day or two earlier. Police also suspect that she may have been sexually assaulted.

O’Dell worked at Déjà Vu, a topless lounge on Woodward Avenue near McNichols in Highland Park.

Warren Detective Sgt. Steven Mills said she did not show up for a photo shoot at the bar on Dec. 3 and did not come to work the next day, either. When O’Dell did not arrive at her job over the weekend, a co-worker became alarmed, he said.

“We’re trying to develop a timeline. We have a couple of people of interest we’d like to speak with and work from there,” Mills said.

Detectives also hope to interview the little boy’s father, to whom O’Dell is not married.

There were no indications of forced entry into the home and none of her belongings at the house appeared to me missing. She did not own a vehicle, but used a taxicab to get to and from work, police added.

Detectives do not have the woman’s cellphone but have subpoenaed records of her cellphone number, police said.

Green said it was not uncommon for O’Dell to go days without speaking to her parents or other relatives, but checked on her son frequently when the boy was in the care of a babysitter.

The post-mortem examination of O’Dell conducted Monday at the Macomb County Medical Examiner’s Office included a rape kit from the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program in an attempt to retrieve DNA with the hope it may help police identify a suspect.

The city’s police and fire departments last responded to the house in August 2012, Mills said. Neighbors said O’Dell rented the house on Garrick and moved in with her son approximately six months ago.

Nobody answered the phone at the topless bar on Monday afternoon.

Warren police commanders have assigned five detectives to the case, and the six officers in the Special Operations Unit were added mid-afternoon on Monday.